Following Curiosity into the heart of Gale Crater

It’s alive! ALIVE!!!!!

Prepare yourselves for a shock – in fact, grab a chair, you might go a bit dizzy when I break this news to you…

Curiosity has moved. Yes, you read that correctly, she’s moved! Her wheels, bless them, have turned again, and she has edged away from the top of the Rocknest dust dune where she’s been playing about with her scoop in the martian dust…

And a leaked photo shows just why the rover spent so long there, and what she was actually up to with all that ‘scooping’…

Seriously, though, this is great news. Not just because it means Curiosity is now actually on the move again, after setting up camp at Rocknest for so long, but because it means the science team must be pleased enough with the results of all that scooping to feel confident they can move the rover on to another location, and begin the real hard science campaign. It’s all good.

And, of course, it will be great to have a change of scenery! Not a huge change of course, Curiosity won’t be racing off like she was starring in “Fast And Furious 7: Gale Getaway”, but angles will change, and the landscape will open up just a little bit more.

Over the past few days I’ve been intrigued by a group of rocks close to the rover…